Scientists can switch on plants' response to light

Scientists have figured out how plants respond to light and can flip this genetic switch to encourage food growth. The discovery could help increase food supply for an expanding population with shrinking opportunities for ...

Mixed cultures for a greater yield

Monocultures dominate arable land today, with vast areas given over to single elite varieties that promise a high yield. But planting arable land with just one type of crop has its disadvantages: these areas are easy game ...

Arctic 'doomsday vault' stocks up on 60,000 more food seeds

A "doomsday vault" nestled deep in the Arctic received 60,000 new seed samples on Tuesday, including Prince Charles' cowslips and Cherokee sacred corn, increasing stocks of the world's agricultural bounty in case of global ...

'Lost crops' could have fed as many as maize

Make some room in the garden, you storied three sisters: the winter squash, climbing beans and the vegetable we know as corn. Grown together, newly examined "lost crops" could have produced enough seed to feed as many indigenous ...

Shifting the balance of growth vs. defense boosts crop yield

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) scientists are figuring out how to pack more kernels onto a corn cob. One way to boost the productivity of a plant, they say, is to redirect some of its resources away from maintaining ...

Sesame yields stable in drought conditions

Texas has a long history of growing cotton. It's a resilient crop, able to withstand big swings in temperature fairly well. However, growing cotton in the same fields year after year can be a bad idea. Nutrients can get depleted. ...

Grazing animals drove domestication of grain crops

Many familiar grains today, like quinoa, amaranth, millets, hemp and buckwheat, have traits that indicate that they co-evolved for dispersion by large grazing mammals. During the Pleistocene, massive herds directed the ecology ...

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